


Children Are Knives

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 21:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One morning Jim Moriarty wakes up and he's an eight-year-old boy again. It's up to Sebastian to keep things together, and as the adult version of Jim trapped in a little boy's body begins to be replaced with the mind of an actual child and the search for a solution gets harder, Sebastian finds himself wondering if it's a good idea to turn Jim back or if it's better to give him the childhood he really deserved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My last entry for the sherlockmas Afterglow Fest, answering the prompt "Sebastian/Jim (implied, mostly GEN due to nature of fic): Jim pisses off the wrong person and is turned into a child. While at first he remembers who he is, only pint sized (Westwood doesn’t have a children’s line! The guns are too big for his hands! NO ONE TAKES HIM SERIOUSLY), he slowly starts to become more of a child in mind as well as body. Sebastian deals with the fall-out (and tries to give Jim the childhood he never had)." I don't think I'll be able to finish it in time for the end of the fest, but the prompt just called to me so much I had to take a stab at it.
> 
> This is set after "A Scandal In Belgravia" but before "The Reichenbach Fall." Title comes from the following quote by Joanne Harris in "The Girl with No Shadow:" “Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.”

“Sebastian!”

The sound came from the adjoining room where Jim was staying, but it didn’t sound like Jim. It sounded younger. _Much_ younger. Sebastian bolted out of bed and headed towards the room at a breakneck pace. He got there and was not at all prepared for the sight he saw. There was a kid standing next to the bed, a kid no more than eight years old. He was wearing the clothes he knew Jim wore to sleep, the pajama pants and a soft T-shirt. The clothes were swimming on the young boy. “Jim?” he asked after letting his jaw hang for a moment.

“I’m a goddamned child! How in the hell is that possible?” Jim asked. 

“You’ve pissed off any number of people with this takeover,” Sebastian said slowly as he entered the room. He never mentioned it, because Jim was not the type to think about stuff like this, but a part of him believed in the supernatural. A part of him believed in magic and curses and all of that, and seeing a pint-sized Jim Moriarty was making him believe even harder.

“I want to know how it happened!” Jim shouted. “I don’t believe in magic, but that must be what this is. It needs to be fixed! I can’t spend the rest of my life as a kid. I went through this once before. I don’t need to go through it again.”

“There are a few things we need to do first. Get you clothes that actually fit, and then get you the hell out of here,” Sebastian said, pinching the bridge of his nose. One of the two of them needed to think, and Jim was losing his cool so the duty fell on him. “Stay here and be quiet. I’ll put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door. If room service comes tell them to go away, though if they’re good they’ll see the sign and leave.”

“I want a suit,” the child version of Jim said, crossing his arms before realizing he’d let go of the too big pajama pants. The pants fell to the floor in a heap and Jim scrambled to bring them back up to cover his too big boxer briefs. “No pansy children’s clothing for me.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sebastian said with a sigh. He grabbed the sign from the back of the door, shut the door behind him, then leaned against it for a moment. This twist in the proceedings was going to be hard to deal with. Moriarty was incorporating a crime family into his network, a crime family that supposedly had ties to old black magic. Jim had scoffed when he’d heard that, but Sebastian had been more inclined to believe. Jim must have rubbed someone the wrong way for them to take such drastic action.

He put the sign on the door and paused for a moment to think. He needed to get the clothing quickly and then get Jim out of there. It was going to look strange if James Humphrey was nowhere to be found and an eight-year-old boy was seen leaving the room. But he couldn’t even get the kid version of Jim to leave the room without proper clothing. He made his way to his room to change and grab his wallet, and then he made a beeline for the store. He’d never bought clothing for children before, so he made an estimate and quickly purchased stuff. Jim had been the one making himself known in the town while he had stayed in the background, and the fact this was a tourist trap meant hopefully he could blend in.

He hurried back to the hotel and went to Jim’s room, holding the bag with the clothes. He used the keycard and let himself in. Jim was sitting on the bed, his legs crossed as he watched the television. It was on a local news broadcast. “Did you get me a suit?” he asked.

“They didn’t have anything in your size,” Sebastian said.

Jim made a face. “You didn’t get me something with a stupid cartoon on it, did you?” he said as he turned to face Sebastian.

“No. I got you a polo shirt and slacks, plus new underwear, socks and shoes.” He held the bag out to Jim, who climbed off the bed, using one hand to hold his pants and underwear up, and grabbed the bag with his other hand. “Go into the bathroom to change.”

“It’s not like you haven’t seen me naked before,” Jim said.

“That was when you were an adult. Now you’re a kid. It’s different.”

“I don’t see how,” Jim grumbled.

Sebastian sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Humor me, Jim. I need to get us checked out and figure out a way to get you out of here without us being seen.”

“Yes, I can see the problem,” Jim said with a nod. “Go take care of things.” And with that, Jim trundled off to the bathroom. Sebastian stared at the closed door for a moment, then left the room. This was a complication he didn’t need, but he’d make the best of it until they could fix things. He had to.


	2. Chapter 2

Sebastian managed to get Jim out with little trouble. The hotel where they had been staying had the ability to check out over the phone, and he found a little used back exit. No one was the wiser that anything was wrong, and for that he was glad. He was going to get Jim back to London and then from there he would figure out what to do. They were on the train now, almost out of the city, and Jim was sulking. He had sulked before, and as an adult Sebastian had found it mildly attractive, but as a child he just looked sullen. Of course, what did he expect when the man had been transformed into an eight-year-old boy? If the same thing had happened to him he would probably have a similar reaction. He was allowing it for now, thankful that Jim had enough sense not to talk about things until they got to their private car. Once the door slid shut, Jim spoke. “You have to fix this, Sebastian,” he said, crossing his arms and glaring at Sebastian.

“I will try.”

“Do more than try,” Jim replied. “ _Fix it._ ”

Sebastian sighed. Jim was sometimes hard to deal with before all this. He got the feeling his boss was going to be insufferable as long as he was trapped in this body. “There’s a lot I need to look into, Jim. A lot of research I need to do. But I will start as soon as we get back to London.”

“Like what?” Jim asked, a tone of curiosity in his voice. He didn’t look quite as sullen anymore, either.

“Well, I need to find people who practice magic, find out what kind of spell could have done this. Then I suppose I need to find the specific people who cast the spell. Get them to fix things.” He didn’t add the worry that there was no way to fix this. Jim didn’t need to hear it, and it would probably send him into a rage anyway. “It’s going to take time. And then I need to handle the organization. No one’s going to take orders from an eight-year-old.”

Jim nodded slightly. “That is true. At least I’ve had you give orders before. People will listen to you.”

“Yes,” Sebastian replied. “You’ve got to stay out of sight. I can’t take you back to your place in case it’s being watched. You’ll have to come home with me.”

“But my things!” Jim said, glaring at Sebastian.

“I’ll bring some of them over,” he replied. “The important things, at least. And I need to get you clothing.”

“Does Westwood make suits for children?” Jim asked.

“I doubt it,” Sebastian replied, and the sullen look on Jim’s face came back. “I can have suits made for you, if needed.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Do you have room for me?”

Sebastian nodded. Jim had never inquired about where he rested his head, but with the money he made as Jim’s right-hand man he had sufficient space for the two of them. “We need to come up with a story, though, in case anyone asks who you are.”

“Like I’m your nephew?” he said.

“That would work,” Sebastian said with a nod. “Your parents are on an extended trip and I’m your guardian for the moment. I’m sure I can get someone to discreetly make any paperwork we might need. You’ll need another alias, though.”

“James Callahan,” Jim said with a shrug. “I was going to use that for my next set of identification.”

“All right. I’ll have someone draw up a birth certificate with that name,” he replied. “For as long as this lasts, you’ll need to blend in. And that means you need to attend a school.”

Jim made a face. “You can’t be serious.”

“If you spend all your time with me that will look even more suspicious. The beauty of using the temporary guardianship excuse is that when this is all fixed I can say your parents came to take you back.”

Jim thought it over for a moment, and then nodded. “That sounds good. I can pretend to be a child if I truly need to.”

“Good,” Sebastian replied. “You’ll have to be better than you were when you were pretending to be Richard Brook, though. You have to be convincing as a young boy.”

He sighed. “I suppose this means I need to start watching children’s telly, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly. You can always be a bit more polished than most boys your age.” Jim glared slightly. “I mean, boys the age you appear to be. If you’re privileged it will be expected. Privileged children aren’t really children.”

“And what would you know about that?” Jim asked, the glare gone and a look of curiosity on his face.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about my past,” Sebastian said, looking out the window. He didn’t like to think about it and he hoped his boss didn’t press. He would be lucky if Jim just let it drop, and after a moment of no reaction from Jim he felt his luck had held out.

“Let’s discuss James Callahan’s past,” Jim said. “We need to both make sure we get our stories straight.”

“Very well,” Sebastian said with a nod as he turned back to Jim. “Let’s go ahead and begin.”


	3. Chapter 3

They made it back to London and to Sebastian’s flat as quickly as possible. Jim still seemed to be Jim, so Sebastian risked leaving him on his own long enough to go to his home and get things. Sebastian was the only person trusted with the entry code and the alarm code, he knew that, but the more he looked around Jim’s place the more he wondered what he should actually bring back. He went to the office and got all the things regarding the business, then got some personal effects he thought Jim might appreciate having. This was Jim Moriarty he was taking care of, though, and with Jim’s hair trigger temper he had no clue if what he chose would appease his boss or set him off.

Jim was a kid. He’d had a whole train trip, a cab ride and then a trip in his own car to try and wrap his head around this, but it was still such a change that he couldn’t really understand it. Logically he knew Jim had angered someone enough to take drastic action, and that there would be a lot of research and stuff to do before it could get fixed, if it ever could. If. That was the big question, if this change could ever be corrected. Sebastian believed magic existed, that much was true, but he had no clue how it actually worked. He was about to get a crash course in it, he could tell.

He wanted to hurry up and get back to Jim so he grabbed the things he was bringing back and got back in his car. Clothes and the like could wait until later in the day, but he would need to get those things today or else Jim would be in the same clothes two days in a row and he knew _that_ would set his boss off. He drove back to his home trying to plan as much as he could as to what his next steps would be, and when he arrived back and let himself in he found Jim at the table with a notepad and pen in front of him. If he didn’t know better he’d swear it was some kid doing homework, but that was definitely not the situation here. He knew Jim was doing what he had been trying to do on the way back home: figure out where to go from here.

“You have calls to make,” Jim said without looking up. “I wrote down a list of anyone in the organization who might have ties to magic. Call them all and figure out a way to fix this.”

“Fine,” Sebastian said with a nod, setting the files on the table and the duffel bag he’d put Jim’s things in next to them. “How long is your list?”

“Thirty people. I don’t have their phone numbers so you’ll have to go back to the office to get them.”

“You need a babysitter if I’m going to leave,” Sebastian said. Jim glared. “For appearances sake. You only look eight, not twelve. Too young to leave alone.”

“Do you have anyone you can trust?” Jim asked, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms.

“One or two people. Remember your alias and the cover story we came up with and you’ll be fine. If you feel like expanding it, tell me when I get home.”

“Well, go now,” Jim said.

Sebastian shook his head. “I need to get you clothes and stuff first, and you need to be there for that. I’ll start making the calls tomorrow.” Jim pouted slightly. “I have a few other contacts to add to your list, I think. I’d rather sit down and make all the calls at once, and I need to go through my own files to get their information.”

Jim sighed. “Fine. Let’s go get the clothes. I want suits from Westwood, but I suppose I’ll have to wait for those.”

“Most likely,” Sebastian said with a nod. He then nodded towards the bag. “I didn’t know what you’d want so I just grabbed the things I thought you’d like most.”

Jim got out of the seat and opened up the bag, going through the contents. He nodded slowly as he looked at everything and when he was done he looked at Sebastian. “This will be sufficient for now. I’ll give you a list of other things to bring home tomorrow.”

“Fine.” Sebastian grabbed the duffel bag. “Let me show you where your room is.” He began to walk down the hallway, knowing Jim was in step behind him. He opened the second door on the left and then went inside.

“Why do you have a guest bedroom if you’re a loner?” Jim asked.

“I have a friend who stays occasionally,” Sebastian said with a shrug, setting the bag on the bed.

“Will he be bothersome?” Jim asked.

“ _She_ won’t be a bother,” Sebastian said, and he smirked slightly at the surprised look on Jim’s face. “She works for the organization, though, so you should be very careful around her if she comes to visit and you’re still a kid.”

“Who is she?” Jim asked, going over to the bag and opening it.

“Moira O’Callahan,” Sebastian said. “I raised her, and when she found out what I did at the tender age of ten she asked me to train her. That was twelve years ago, and she’s just as good as I am.”

“That’s interesting,” Jim said as he began taking items out of the bag. “I didn’t know that. I just knew your styles were very similar.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Every teacher leaves their imprint on their student, I guess, though she’s more like a daughter.”

“I’m surprised you kept that from me.”

“You just never asked. If you had, I would have told you.”

“How did she come into your care?” Jim asked, pausing in what he was doing.

“Her mother Samantha was my best mate growing up. She went off and married an abusive Irish lout, and when Moira was five she escaped and found me again. They were here for two years before he found them and murdered Samantha and tried to take Moira away.”

“I’m assuming he isn’t alive anymore,” Jim said.

“No.” Sebastian looked out the window. “Samantha had no other family, and neither did her husband. Moira knew me as Uncle Sebastian anyway so when I was asked if I wanted to continue to care for her I agreed. It’s what Samantha would have wanted.”

“Did Samantha know what you did?” Jim asked, more enthralled by the tale then by unpacking his things.

Sebastian shook his head. “She may have had her suspicions, but she never brought them up to me.”

“Did you love her?” he asked quietly.

“As a sister. I may be bisexual but I usually prefer men.”

“I’ve only met Moira a few times,” Jim said after a moment. “She always did remind me of you. That was why I picked her to head up the operations in Ireland. Now I know why.” He went back to unpacking his things. “Do you think we can trust her with the truth about me?”

“Possibly,” he said. “She knows I’m estranged from my family so our cover story wouldn’t work with her anyway. And I think she believes in magic and stuff more than I do.”

“Then if you need to, tell her.”

Sebastian nodded. “Fine.” He watched as Jim unpacked his things and began putting them away. “She won’t be around for a visit for at least a few months, not until you were supposed to have the leads in each section of the organization come for the annual meeting.”

“About that,” Jim said. “You’ll have to be the face of the organization until I’m fixed. We need to move up that meeting so that everyone knows.”

“How soon?” Sebastian asked.

“As soon as possible. As soon as you have an idea of how long I’ll be a child.”

“I think we should wait for the meeting,” Sebastian said slowly. “If I get you changed back in a few weeks it won’t even be an issue.”

Jim paused, and then nodded. “That is true.”

“But we do need to do damage control. You didn’t get that crime family under the organization. They may brag about the spell.”

“Kill them all,” Jim said with a shrug. “No crime family means no one will talk.”

“Are you sure?” Sebastian asked.

“They turned me into a fucking child!” Jim yelled. “Do you really think I’m going to let that go without retribution?”

“Let me see if I can get some leads from them first,” Sebastian said. “See if I can figure out who cast the spell.”

“Fine,” Jim grumbled. “Torture them first, though. That would make it at least a little more satisfying.”

“Do you want to be present when I do it?” Sebastian asked.

“Of course. It’s no fun for you to torture them for this if I don’t get to watch.”

“Then we’ll hold off on enrolling you in school until after this is settled,” Sebastian said with a nod. “It’s the summer anyway. I have about a month.”

“But let’s be quick about it. Any rumors could damage the organization,” Jim said as he got the last item out of the bag. “We start in two days.”

“Three,” Sebastian said. Jim quirked an eyebrow. “I have a lot of people to call, and research to do.”

“Fine, fine,” Jim said with a sigh. “But just hurry.”

“When you’re done organizing everything we’ll go get you clothes,” Sebastian said, moving away from the wall where he had been leaning. “I’ll be in the dining room.”

“I’ll go out there when I’m done,” Jim said with a nod. Sebastian left the room at that point. If nothing else, he was going to have his hands full for the next few days. He just hoped there weren’t any more nasty surprises in store when Jim began to take his revenge.


End file.
